


are you selling your soul to a cold gun

by rayguntomyhead



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 00:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15740382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayguntomyhead/pseuds/rayguntomyhead
Summary: “So anyways,” Wade says, “this is my ex-girlfriend, Vanessa.”Vanessa’s legs slowly unlock from around Wade’s waist as he lowers her to the ground, smooths down her dress. But she doesn’t leave the circle of his arms as she turns, cocks her head and stares at Nate.It should be less intimidating coming from a tiny woman wearing a giant cat face shirt that saysLive Long and Prospurr.It isn’t.Or the day after, reality hits Nathan Summers like a crotch to the face.





	are you selling your soul to a cold gun

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted finished version of a fic I posted on my other account that was supposed to be a threesome. May turn into Nate/Vanessa/Wade, if I ever get around to writing the sequel.

“So anyway,” Wade says, “this is my ex-girlfriend, Vanessa.”

Vanessa’s legs slowly unlock from around Wade’s waist as he lowers her to the ground, smooths down her dress. But she doesn’t leave the circle of his arms as she turns, cocks her head and stares at Nate.

It should be less intimidating coming from a tiny woman wearing a giant cat face shirt that says  _Live Long and Prospurr._

It isn’t.

Nate swallows. There’re words he should say, introductions, something, but exhaustion pulls heavy on his bones, tunneling his vision and fogging his brain. Two body-slides, three battles, saving everything he’s ever loved and then losing them.

“Honey,” Vanessa doesn’t seem at all phased by how Wade’s got both arms and leg and his neck hooked around her like traumatized sloth. “What have we talked about? That’s gonna work  _so_ much better when we make it to the courthouse.”

“I want it to be special,” Wade says. “And you vetoed the My Little Ponies theme  _and_ the all-brass clown quartet.”

She makes an exasperated sound then tilts her head, looks Nate up, down. “So anyway. I’m his  _fiancée,_ Vanessa. And let me guess, you’re… John Connor?”

Wade gasps, attempts to bury his face even further into the crook of her shoulder.

“That’s what  _I_ said,” he mumbles against her skin.

Nate blinks through the grit in his eyes, chest twinging strangely. Fiancee, huh?

“That’s not my–my name’s Cable.”

He wants to get sleep. Maybe get clean first. But Wade and his girl clearly have catching up to do and from the looks of the open plan apartment, there’s not a lot of places they can stick Nate so they can get on with that.

That grungy hotel from last night should still have a room. The apathy of the staff means it doesn’t take that much of a telepathic push. It isn’t even in the top fifty of terrible places he’s had to bed down. He just needs a few hours to pull himself together. Then tomorrow he can figure out what the fuck he’s gonna do, now he’s here.

“I should go,” he says, tongue thick and heavy in his mouth. Maybe he can pick up a bottle of cheap alcohol, something strong enough to strip paint and drown in. “Don’t want to impose.”

Wade jerks his head up, eyebrows pulling together and mouth dropping open.

“And go where, Real Steel? ‘Cause you missed the jet on bunking down with Shiny Jesus and his teenage disciples.”

“I’m not a child,” Nate says. “I can, actually, figure it out.”

He shifts backwards, but before he can get more than a step Vanessa gives him the most unimpressed eyebrow raise Nate’s ever seen from anyone besides his wife.

“I’m sure you can, but you don’t have to,” she says. “Since Wade brought you back here, and I’m assuming not just to awkwardly watch us play tonsil hockey.”

“I…” Nate starts, swallows. It’s tempting. The apartment may not be huge, but what Nate can see is all tacked-up Polaroid grins and mismatched mugs, scattered cushions and piles of music records. It looks comfortable, inviting. It looks like a home.

“We may not be the Hotel Chevalier, but the couch is like,” and Vanessa waggles her hand back and forth, “at least eighty percent clean.”

“Maybe seventy percent,” Wade says thoughtfully. “But I think the stains really add to the aesthetic.”

“You don’t have to–“ Nate tries again, but this time all he gets is a rude noise as Vanessa wriggles her way out from Wade’s arms. The sad puppy face he makes is pathetic, but she squeezes his shoulder.

“Our casa is su casa and all that jazz,” she waves a hand at the colorful spill of tchotchkes behind her. “I’ll bring you a blanket.”

There’s nothing left in him to argue so Nate hesitates, nods. He can always move quietly on tomorrow.

 

 

Nate squints up at the hateful brightness of the midmorning sky. The late November breeze ghosts along his skin, but it’s not enough to stop the sun from its incessant warming of him and the concrete edge of Wade’s apartment roof beneath him.

Above it’s so fucking blue. Everything his world never had. Everything he’s gonna damn well ensure Hope gets, now he’s here. It’s giving him a headache.

“Hey, much-hotter RoboCop.”

Nate startles, hand going automatically to his belt, but it’s only Wade. Must have finally tired of his fervent table-macking with Vanessa. He looks remarkably refreshed for a man who’d tried to off himself heroically the day before.

“Hate to interrupt you scheduled sulk time but can I offer you a bright glass of one hundred percent Florida sunshine to glare at instead?” Wade plops himself down comfortably close to Nate, flush against his side. Nate’s not going to elbow him, he’s  _not._ Fucker would probably just giggle and try to start a slap war

Wade’s legs kick aimlessly off the building, and Nate stares down, past his boots and Wade’s to the bright green dumpster squatting on the ground below, the damp-dark street crusted with cigarette butts and broken glass.

A cup of some neon orange shit bobs in front of his face. Wade waggles it, sloshing tangy-sweet liquid dangerously close to the edge.

“C’mo-on,” he says. “Don’t tell me you’re opposed to putting the good in the morning.”

He hums some blithe little jingle under his breath as he makes the glass do a stately dance two inches from Nate’s chin.

It should be annoying. Nate blinks, fights to keep his lips from pulling up in a grin as he says, “I drink coffee, in the morning.”

He reaches for the glass anyway, fist slowing uncurling. It looks strange, smells strange, but he’s thirsty. He’ll suffer whatever Wade’s brought him, and hunt down a real drink later.

“Lemme guess,” Wade breathes in and lets it out in an exaggerated sigh as he props his chin up on his hands, “Black like your soul?”

Nate huffs, hutches over his glass.

“How do you drink it,” he says, “with more sugar than coffee?”

“Ooh, good call,” Wade bumps Nate cheerfully with his shoulder. “But no. This sex doll-looking clown is on a strict diet of unicorn frappuccinos.”

He widens his eyes, “Extra unicorn.”

Nate’s shoulders tense. He  _had_  called him that, hadn’t he? But really. Look at him. He opens his mouth to say… something, but then Wade’s spandex covered finger presses gently on his lips.

Fuck, it smells like ass. Does he  _ever_ wash that suit?

“Ah, ah,” Wade says, “I can feel the insult brewing. No one insults Twilight Sparkle and lives to tell the proverbial tail, so shut up and drink your Vitamin C, T-800.”

What the hell.

Nate closes his mouth. Swats Wade’s hand away. Drinks.

It’s definitely sweet, but it’s more than that, it tastes… clean, fresh and tart. Good.

He upends the glass, drains the rest down his throat before he even knows what he’s doing. Licks his lips, stares down at the stringy yellow remainder smeared along the glass.

“Looks like somebody hasn’t been getting his eight glasses a day,” Wade says.“Do you know that’s the leading cause of kidney stones? Trust me, letting you squeeze my hand while trying to shit rocks out of your dick is  _so_ not gonna be Fun Times with Our Friends.”

His voice perks up cheerfully, like even the thought of holding hands is enough to get him going.

“I hydrate an adequate amount, asshole,” Nate finally gives in to the urge to elbow Wade firmly in his ribs, as pushes clumsily to his feet. “You never shut up, do you?”

“That’s a negative, ghostrider,” Wade says, flailing back before bouncing up and trailing Nate to the fire escape. “Been there got the bloody t-shirt to prove it.”

There’s something, in his voice, under the blitheness–dark, and weighted, and bitter–but Nate doesn’t ask. Let the man have his secrets. God know he had enough of his own.

 

 

“Being from the future and all, I can only assume y to living off Soylent Green,” Vanessa says, leaning on the cabinet. “So I feel like pop tarts will be a vast improvement.”

Nate grunts, frowns down at his plate. The crinkled squares of pasty stare apathetically back. He’d meant to refuse the offer of breakfast when Vanessa had caught him and Wade heading in from the roof. Except, she’d started talking and somehow he’d ended up at the table quite before he realized what was happening.

“Not a morning person, huh?” Vanessa pushes off the cabinet, swiping a cup of something hot off the counter and settling herself across from Nate. “That’s okay, you can be the Hawkeye in this comedy show, I’m down with it.”

Nate glances desperately around for Wade, but somehow between the window and the table Wade had popped off somewhere out of sight. It’s too early for this. Nate shoves half a pop tart in his mouth, slumps further into his chair.

“But enough of that,” Vanessa says casually. Too casually, with eyes sliding sharp. “So. You and Wade. Heard you used that gadget of yours to save him.”

Nate freezes, chews his pop tart a little more aggressively. Had Wade only just now gotten around to spilling the beans, or was this just the first chance she’d had to corner him about it?

Vanessa settles her elbows on the table, wraps both hands around her mug.

“Thank you,” she says, stares at the streak of sunlight across the table, the steam wisping off her drink.

“I didn’t do it for him,” Nate grunts, shoves the rest of the pop tart into his mouth. He didn’t. No matter how scared Wade’s eyes had looked like as death rolled steadily over him, Nate’s bullet sunk in his chest. Babbling devolved from his usual chatter into utter nonsense, still squeezing Russell’s hand tight.

He didn’t do it for them.

Vanessa inclines her head, settles back in her chair. They sit there, in the morning quiet. Ness with her drink, Nate with his pop tarts.

Nate sits and thinks of Hope.

 

First step to any mission is gathering intel. There’s the bar Wade mentioned, Sister Margarine’s or something similarly idiotic, but somehow Nate doesn’t think the proprietor is much fond of him at the moment.

There’s another name that’s whispered when Nate goes digging, and so Sunny’s is where he ends up. Just as dim-lit, rickety, and covered in a fine coat of apathetic grime as the best of the merc bars, but when Nate sits himself at the counter the one patron within a couple seats abruptly reseats himself further away.

Well. Nate cuts an intimidating figure.

Except the bartender, instead of ambling over to take his order, doesn’t budge from his corner.

“You might want to move on,” the bartender has his back to the bottles, about as far away from Nate as he can get. “We don’t deal with your kind here.”

Nate looks up from the bar top, hand sliding from the roughened edge down to his hip. He’d only just sat down. He’d been careful to pack only what his jacket easily concealed. What the fuck was the asshole on about?

“I’m not looking for trouble,” Nate says carefully, “I’m new in town. Looking for work.”

The bartender’s face contorts, and he pointedly moves his hand to his own gun.

“I don’t think you heard me,” he says, with a lingering glance at Nate’s infected arm. “We don’t  _your kind._ You want work, you go to No Name, or Sister Margaret’s. Our boss caters to a particular cliental.”

What. The  _hell_. 

His fist clenches, metal joints whirring along hatefully and of course. Of course this backwards oblivious time period would get his arm clocked as mutant, and not as the fucking life-destroying virus it was.

Nate growls, doesn’t suppress the grin that curls sharp on his lips as the bartender cowers.

Doesn’t matter his arm isn’t a mutation. Man’s a bigoted fuck. Or at least paid well to be one.

He shoves back from the counter, flips open his jacket so the man can get a good look at his weaponry. It’s childish, but if he’s not going to get what he came here for he can at least get a little satisfaction out of the way, the bartender looks like he’s two seconds away from shitting his pants.

And if he’s gonna give into his juvenile urges, he might as well go all in.

“Tell your boss,” Nate says, as he backs towards the door, “to cut off his dick and go fuck himself with it.”

 

 

"Hey,” Vanessa folds her arms.

Nate freezes, one leg on the fire escape. There’s absolutely no reason for him to feel guilty. It’s not like he’s a teenager caught sneaking in from a bunker party. Just because he’s teetering a bit as the alcohol swims merrily in his bloodstream, makes it hard to balance.

“So are you sneaking in late to avoid me, or do you wanna talk woman to cyborg?” she says, leans against the back of the couch.

“I’m not avoiding you. I had shit to do,” Nate pulls his leg back inside, growls. “And I’m not a fucking cyborg.”

He’s not going to sleep. Maybe she knows where the coffee is and how to make it like Wade. Then they can drink coffee and eat pop tarts and absolutely not talk about this.

“I dunno, I kind of feel you are. Avoiding me with the whole sneaking in the window thing, not a cyborg, I’m not the identity police,” Vanessa says, tilts her head. “I know my knowledge of obscure sci-fi can be super intimidating, you don’t have to lie to spare your ego.”

“What,” Nate blinks, stares at her.

“Exactly!” Vanessa beams. “I’ll try to stick to Star Trek, just for you.”

Star Trek? Those movies where they fought with some kind of stupid laser swords instead of the vastly more practical guns?

“I thought they called it Star Wars,” Nate says, wanders in the kitchen's direction. Maybe if he can find the bag of coffee, he can figure out how to make it himself. The first cupboard reveals only packets of tuna, ramen, and for some reason six neatly wrapped butterscotch candies.He closes it, grabs the knob of the second cupboard and wait. It had gone suspiciously silent.

Nate glances over his shoulder, and Vanessa’s standing there mouth open looking like someone just insulted her grandmother and also her dog. Huh.

“Where do you keep the coffee,” he says, trying to keep the pile of loose tea bags from falling from the shelf onto his face.

“Please tell me that was a joke,” Vanessa says faintly. “So I can tell you it is too damn late to be playing with my emotions like that.”

Whatever. Maybe the coffee’s in one of the drawers.

“No, really,” she says, “Is there no pop culture in your sad, sad future? Will I never get to know if Luke is avenged? If there’s an Avengers 11? If they’ll ever step up to the plate and give us the unapologetic Kirk and Spock love story we deserve?”

The first drawer, and the second have a sad lack of coffee. Nate pulls open the bottom one and finally. He opens the bag, breathes in a lungful of rich coffee-scented air.

“I don’t watch movies,” he says, “I had better things to do.”

“Okay, except no,” and then Vanessa’s in his space, plucking the coffee bag from his hand and steering him towards the couch. “Clearly you’ve been sent into my life for a reason, and that reason is an appreciation of the finest movies ever made.”

Wait, no, his coffee _._ Nate stares longingly back at the kitchen as she pushes him towards the couch, sticks her hand between the cushions to produce a crumpled bag of what looks like more candies. “We’ll start with _Phase IV_.”

 

When Wade bangs through the door three hours later, Nate barely looks up. Ripley’s finally made it to the escape shuttle after all, and like hell is he gonna miss this now.

“Hey sweet potato,” Vanessa says through a mouthful of popcorn and elbows Nate. “Shh, watch this, this is the best part.”

Then a hundred and ninety pounds of red leather and weaponry plops between them, squirming until he can settle his upper half over Vanessa’s lap and his lower half over Nate’s. And Nate would push him off except the alien’s finally come into the open now and if he stabs Wade he’s gonna bitch and moan and flail about. Besides, it makes something in his throat go rough at the way Wade just lets him take his weight, like he hadn’t broken half the bones in Wade’s body before, shot him full of holes. 

“You showed him  _Alien_  without me,” Wade thumps his head against Vanessa dramatically, “how could you.”

“Shh- _hh_ ,” Vanessa says, “or no fuzzy handcuffs later for you.”

 

 

Somehow, Nate just… stays. It’s two days, three, a week. It should be strange, how quickly it becomes normal. The nights with the murmur of of Wade’s ridiculous, antiquated television dramas, the velvet plush pillow he presses over his ears when the moans drowned out the murmers. The mornings watching the sun come up in a sky only just tinged with smog. Hot water. Fuck,  _hot water_ , as much as he wants. It’s practically sinful.

And it should be strange, but Nate’s a soldier. He doesn’t know how to do anything else, but adapt and survive.

The square-shaped computer device Wade drops in Nate’s lap one day is practically an antique. It does, however, allow him to connect to a sprawling cloud of information, free flowing and generous. No fees or mazes of tightly guarded firewalls. They barely even have government encryption that gives his processors a challenge.

He picks through it, over and over, sun up to sun down, looking for some connection, some thread that will weave into a picture of what it all means.

His parents pop up now and again on the news. Part of the celebrated X-Men, the great saviors of mutant kind. Hah. They crumple as easily as the rest of humanity when it all collapses.

Nate could try to warn them. Meet them, for the first time. But hell. He’s already fucked with the timeline enough for one year. If he writes himself out of existence that’s one thing, but if he’s never born then neither is Hope and Nate can’t…

He can’t.

 

 

“You know, we really have to stop meeting like this,” Wade chirps, as he pops himself over the edge of the fire escape and onto the roof. It only takes him three more seconds to get himself draped on his side on the knife’s edge of the building.

Once he’s settled, languorous and relaxed as some mangy alley cat, Wade adds in a surprisingly melodic sing-song, “You know baby, we go back a long way but it hasn’t always been easy, you living on the east coast, me living on the west.”

What.

“We live in the same goddamn apartment you dumb fuck,” Nate says. “And I’ve known you a week. Why are you following me up here?”

Because Wade always follows him up here eventually, every goddamn morning, to run his smart sex-lipped mouth. At least, if he isn’t out working a job, macking on his gorgeous equally smart-mouthed fiancee, or flaunting the beginnings of regenerating body parts.

It’s what Nate should do, work jobs. Working something. Instead of skulking around Wade’s rooftop, wallowing in the flood of incessant garbage that passed as news to get himself up to speed.

“Whoa, cool your jets, Gadget Boy,” Wade doesn’t sound remotely intimidated. “I brought the sweet, sweet jitter juice. Your cup of joe. Drink of the gods,” and somehow produces a steaming hot mug of something that smells better than any coffee Nate’s ever had.

Nate doesn’t understand him. Doesn’t understand him and his coffee and the stream of baffling garbage that pours out of his mouth. How he just invited the guy who but for the grace of Graymalkin got him killed to bunk down indefinitely on his and his fiancee’s couch. He’s a smart-mouthed riddle, wrapped in chutzpah, inside a whole lot of scarred-up enigma

Nate’s T-O infected hand is clenched at his side under the edge of his poncho and he uncurls it, slowly, reaches out to take the cup.

Fuck. It’s amazing. Hot, perfectly bitter with just a hint of sweet to cut it and bring out the flavor. Nate’s military, and thus long trained out of caring how he gets his caffeine, but christ if he can’t appreciate the way this tastes. How everything in this soft, wastefully decadent past tastes.

“Do you need me to give you two a moment alone? Maybe a room? A clown vibrator and a few back issues of  _Playguy_?”

Nate hasn’t even gotten to his second sip. Not that he manages more than a resigned roll of his eyes with the bitter-chocolate tang of the coffee still sweet on his tongue.

“’S good,” he grunts between slow sips, then adds a grudging, “thanks.”

Wade contorts himself sideways, enough he can lean his head on Nate’s shoulder and coo.

“Did you use your big boy manners? See I  _knew_ you liked me.”

Nate huffs. “I don’t.”

“Awww, you do,” Wade squirms more, like he’s trying to find a position that will make his ridiculous attempt at… whatever he’s trying to do successful. Nate digs the heel of his palm into his forehead, tries halfheartedly to elbow Wade away.

“I really don’t.”

The pout Wade projects is palpable.

“I’m in the wrong continuity for this,” he complains, finally giving up and settling back upright against Nate’s side. “Not that I’m complaining, but you’re so much taller in the–“

“Shut the fuck up,” Nate grunts. “Before I make you.”

“Ooo,” Wade sounds absolutely thrilled as he leans in closer, and can that man never react normally to anything. “ _Please.”_

He starts in again on some ramble without missing a beat, more baffling, fanciful chatter. And Nate could push him away, but he has a sinking suspicion it’s a losing battle. Besides, he has coffee. And Wade’s weight snugged against him isn’t… entirely unpleasant.

 

 

“So I told Russell to give us two weeks to get everything ready,” Wade says. “And tick tock,” he taps on his stupid cartoon character watch, “our time’s coming.”

Nate’s spoon pauses halfway to his mouth, mouth full of some saccharinely sweet cereal.

“I really thought Brooklyn would be our best option,” Vanessa waves her pop tart aggressively. “P.S. 321 for the kids and all, plenty of mutant friendly business. Curse gentrification.”

Wade shakes his head sadly. “We could consider Gowanus.”

Vanessa frowns.

“Flatbush? Brooklyn Heights?” Wade makes a melodramatic sigh. “You make a lot of money, I make a lot of money, theoretically we could move to Williamsburg.”

“Do you have to take the train every day?” Vanessa pokes Wade in the armpit. “I think not. We’re  _not_ moving to Williamsburg.”

These people and their petty arguments about which sections of the city are better. In Nate’s future, you lived wherever you wouldn’t get irradiated or taken out by the local cartels. Nate stuffs his mouth full of soggy flakes, swallows them fast enough he nearly chokes. 

By the time he’s finished, Wade and Vanessa have finally agreed on a plan to find a new place that is not a studio. They never mention Nate, and well. He supposes he’s stayed long enough. By the time they’ve found a new place, Nate will be moving on.

 

The apartment seem ghost-like without them, echoing with the sound of the rain against the windowpanes.

Nate’s never been good with silence. He slumps on the couch, flicks the TV on without thinking. The singsong voice of the newscaster, babbling on about some inane film star or celebrity and who had broken up with whom. It’s infuriating.

He finds the remote, flips from neon-colored channel to neon-colored channel. Some exuberant animated animal fills the screen and Nate pauses, confused. They’re singing some song, about letters and reading and oh. Of course. This is television for children.

He watches, the bright chatter and cheer as the characters dance across the screen. Hope will– Hope would have loved this. She’d cherished every hand sewn toy Aliya had made for her, spent hours curled in Nate’s arms very seriously dictating all the little dramas of their lives to him.

She’d never been afraid of Nate’s arm, what it meant. Because Aliya had told her, frank as she always was in her own blithely facetious way, about the way the world worked. Nate might’ve tried to spare her the truth as long as possible, let her cling to the innocence children should be able to have, but then. A world at war allowed for no innocence.

At least in would take more than casual contact to give his virus to her, and Nate would  _never_ let that happen. Maybe when she was older, she would really understand what the metal grafted onto where he should have had a fourth limb meant, why Nate was so careful to bandage every open wound before he would come near them–

But then.

Now it won’t ever matter.

 

 

The morning clouds cluster across the sky, the same dull, brooding grey as the roof beneath him. Nate taps his bottle idly against the concrete, the glass clinking over and over in counterpoint with the throbbing in his head.

Sirens wail somewhere in the distance, the mournful screams of a city that’s slowly destroying itself. A planet slitting its own wrists until everything good is bled dry.

Maybe it’s too late. Maybe this planet’s already fucked itself so hard there’s no coming back.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Glass hits stone hard enough it almost cracks, and Nate jerks it up to drain that last bit of beer. Throws it down to the dumpster below.

“And he lines up the shot and  _bam,_  another goal for the plucky newcomer. Time to tighten up that defense, ladies and gentlethems, it’s about to get ho-ooot up in the six.”

Fuck. Nate flinches, digs his nails into his thighs. Wade must be back. There’s the flapping thud of Wade’s crocs as he pads across to Nate, then a pained groan as he settles down against his side and what the fuck’s with him and getting all up in Nate’s personal space? Who looks at a man covered in threat and metal and just, cozies right up?

“So, how’ve you been, still working on your brooding skills?” Wade jabs Nate in the side with one arm, rummaging around with the other in some ridiculous Hello Kitty bag he brought up with him. “At this rate you’ll graduate to Batman levels of angst in no time.”

He makes a triumphant  _aha_  noise and then plops a plain square box into Nate’s lap. It’s tied with a lacy gold ribbon, and Nate stares at it.

“What. Is that.”

When he doesn’t make a move to open it, Wade sighs, bounces his legs off the side of the building and says, “I don’t know what you’ve been deprived of in your sad redux of grungier  _1984,_ but this is what the laymen call a present. El presente **,**  if you will.”

Wade brought him a gift? Nate stares at it suspiciously, still doesn’t touch. Maybe it’s a practical joke. Maybe it’s a bomb.

“C’mon, open, open,” Wade jabs him with his knee, and jesus he’s like a five-year-old. Nate would know, he has–had one.

He shudders, boxes the thought up and neatly tucks it away. The cardboard opens easily, only the flimsy ribbon keeping the flaps in place. Inside are tiny brown squares, some decorated with sugary flowers, small nuts, flakes of gold. There’s a faint sweet smell coming from them, but what the hell are they?

“Is this… food?” Nate plucks one out, rolls it gently between his fingers. It’s soft, smudging coffee brown stains onto his hands.

“Fold me into thirds and mail me to China,” Wade’s voice pitches ridiculously high. “Have you survived a planet-wide apocalypse with  _no chocolate?_ Wait, do you even know what this precious little bean from heaven  _is?”_

Nate scowls, shoulders puffing out. Of course he’s heard of chocolate. He reads. Wade’s waxing eloquent about the travesties of a world without this stupid bean paste so before he can really get going Nate crams it in his mouth and oh.

_Oh._

Wade’s still rambling, on and on, nonsense about white chocolate and fillings, but it’s a comforting white noise as Nate closes his eyes. Feels the taste sit on his tongue silky smooth and bittersweet as a kiss goodbye.

And fuck, it smells like Aliya. That cologne she’d foraged from some abandoned monument to decadence and capitalism.

It smells like  _Aliya._

Fingers push another chocolate against his lips and Nate’s eyes startle open. It’s too much, those fingers pushing into his mouth and his forearm swings up and around on autopilot. Bats hard into Wade’s hand, and Hope and Aliyah they’re gone, they’re fucking  _gone,_ except Wade saved them didn’t he. From Nate. From how he failed them.

“What in the actual ass–“ Wade starts but Nate growls, “Back the  _fuck_ off.”

Everything’s chaos in this too-bright drunk Sodom revelry of a world and nothing’s okay,  _nothing_.His guns press heavy against his back and side, hands held steady in front of him. His body’s trembling, vibrating, but his hands hold steady in front.

His chest hurts. There’s no one to force his breath into a rhythm. No voice, chanting  _In-two-three-hold, out-two-three-four-five-six-seven_. He makes himself do it anyway. Over and over until he can force his muscles to unlock. Flexes his hands. Doesn’t move.

When Nate looks up, he’s alone. For once, the dumb fuck listened.

“You okay now, tiger?”

God _dammit._

That dumb fuck didn’t listen. He’s still here, propped against the side of the fire escape, legs bent and hands on his knees. His head tilts idly to the side as he stares at Nate and had there been an once of pity in his eyes Nate would’ve punched his goddamn lights out. But there isn’t.

Nate grunts, turns away to settle back in his spot, ignores him. He should get up. Should go. Just because the first outing had been a bust doesn’t mean he’s allowed to stop. He has to keep pushing, has to figure out how one man can stop this generation from their trajectory towards fucking their planet into a coma.Has to hold things together, for Hope, for Aliya, for the world he’ll never see again.

And maybe it’s better this way. Better if she can grow up in a world with only his memory to comfort her. Better without him to bring down danger, and strife, and one open wound away from seeing her swallowed by a squirming triumph of metal virus.

The sun goes down, sinking cream-orange and ghostly behind the cragged city line until stars appearing shivering in its wake. Nate’s skin ripples into goosebumps as the wind chills over it, and if he’s cold Wade must be even colder, with his short sleeves and stupid hole-y shoes.

But still they sit there, watching the hollow sky above.

 


End file.
